


Instructional

by tiamatv



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Caretaking, Fluff in the Men of Letters Bunker (Supernatural), Human Castiel in the Men of Letters Bunker (Supernatural), M/M, Minor Injuries, Misunderstandings, Season/Series 09
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-09
Updated: 2020-08-09
Packaged: 2021-03-06 05:08:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,935
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25797949
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tiamatv/pseuds/tiamatv
Summary: HOW TO USEOh come on! We don’t need to tell you how to use a shower gel, do we?Castiel glared at the instruction label on the back of the bottle. That was extremely condescending. And unhelpful.“Considering that humans must be trained as toddlers how not to defecate on themselves, I don’t see why not,” he told it.
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester
Comments: 54
Kudos: 356





	Instructional

**Author's Note:**

> Well, it looks like none of my WIPs got worked on today...
> 
> Once again, here we are being domestic in the Season 9 Men of Letters Bunker. Kevin is alive. Castiel's staying. I'm headcanoning this until the end of time. This is very, very unbetaed.
> 
> I can't take any credit for the cuteness: this is the doing of Andy and [sacados](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sacados/pseuds/sacados) and was the product of a Profound Bond discord prompt and wonderfully silly discussion!

Castiel looked at the round, slightly tapered plastic bottle in his hand and frowned. “What am I supposed to do this?”

“You use it, Cas,” Dean answered, over his shoulder, already tipping the rest of his drugstore purchases messily out onto the kitchen’s center island and sorting through them with a sweep of his hand. He tore open a bright red bag and fished out a rectangle. “Want a Kit-Kat?”

“No, thank you.” Castiel wasn’t particularly hungry. He was learning how to recognize the difference between ‘a little hungry’ and ‘very hungry’ and ‘so hungry he was dizzy.’ Sam had told him that there were many things that tasted very good, but that he shouldn’t eat unless he was at least a little hungry, since ‘there lay diabetes or Dean.’

(Castiel understood diabetes, and he didn’t want that. But Sam had fled when Castiel had asked, confused, about what hunger had to do with where Dean was lying down.)

Castiel shook the bottle, then popped the top and peeled off a little sticky piece of plastic to give the contents a careful sniff. It smelled pleasantly tangy, a great deal like that long, woody green stalk that Kevin had added to the porkchops the other day. The aroma was lemony, but spicier, with a sharper complexity. That had made sense, as the herb was called lemongrass, but a little to Castiel’s confusion, the flavors it imparted certainly hadn’t _tasted_ anything like lemon. There was something a little citrusy about it, but he thought the general profile had more of a resemblance to mint and ginger.

Castiel found nomenclature so much more confusing now that he was in a position that he didn’t simply _know_ what things were.

He capped the bottle again and tipped it back and forth, watching the slide of the thick white liquid across the inside. “Do I eat it or drink it?” he finally asked. It was viscous enough that either was an option.

Dean paused. “Uh, no. Don’t do that. You were saying you didn’t like soap scum on your skin, so… well, anyway.” He shuffled his feet just slightly, the toe of one boot scuffing noisily against the floor, then returned to fussing with his chocolate. He broke one piece in half with a small, enticing ‘pop.’ “You sure you don’t want some? Don’t have to eat a whole one.”

Castiel cocked his head to the side. “Is it the one with the crunchy biscuit inside?” he asked, hopefully, taking a step closer. He had liked that kind the best. The contrast between the textures of the melting coating and the wafers was very pleasant when he chewed.

“Yeah.” Dean grinned and offered him one of the little rectangles. Their skin brushed in a delicate tingling graze of sensation. The sweet chocolate was soft with the warmth of Dean’s fingers, a smudge of it left behind on the tips when Castiel took the treat.

Well, perhaps he was a little hungry.

He forgot about Dean’s gift until later that evening. Fortunately, almost all human products these days came with instructions.

They _needed_ instructions, no matter what Kevin said—Castiel still remembered the sharp-flavored curl of toothpaste under his tongue, the lumpy swish of it in his mouth. How _had_ he been supposed to know it was always supposed to go on a brush? It was astringent and coarse enough that it had seemed up to the task of cleansing without any additional aids. The Romans had used a miswak twig at times, but on others they had simply gargled substances.

(Like urine. This was, now that Castiel was more familiar with its production, a truly disgusting concept that he had no intentions of emulating. Toothpaste was _very_ much an improvement.)

Dean had said something about this being a substitute for soap, but what kind? The kind they washed their hands with? Their bodies? The dishes? The floor? There were so _many._ Castiel turned over the bottle and studied the label.

> HOW TO USE
> 
> Oh come on! We don’t need to  
>  tell you how to use a shower gel,  
>  do we?

Castiel glared at the instruction label. That was extremely condescending. And unhelpful.

“Considering that humans must be trained as toddlers how not to defecate on themselves, I don’t see why not,” he told it.

Oh, but at least there was more. He read down the neat lines of text, following them with a finger.

Oh.

_Oh._

*_*_*_* 

Dean wasn’t really much into impulse buying things. The fact was, growing up there’d never been much money for that. Whenever there was extra in his pocket to blow, it’d always gone for stuff Sammy needed anyway—notebooks, colored pencils, socks with funny animals on them.

Then they’d been out on their own, and they could hustle like no-one’s fuckin’ business. But a lot of their ready cash, whenever they had any left over, ended up going towards whiskey and strippers and fries to go with the burgers, anyway, rather than tchotchkes. Even though the Impala was a big girl, she only had so much room in her—and most of that was earmarked for the family business.

Dean had his brother; he had his memories. He had Baby. He had pictures, his mom’s wedding ring, a pair of jeans worn soft in the thighs and boots broken in just right. He had a job and a trunk full of the best damned shit to do it with. He didn’t need _things_ to be happy.

But now that they had the bunker, they _could_ have stuff. A room. A nice mattress. Sheets that didn’t smell funny. They all had their own little things, even if it was their own shaving cream or their own soy milk (only Kev drank that shit—well, he had, he’d turned a little green when Cas had asked him about ‘phytoestrogens’ the other day) or an electric toothbrush that left Dean’s mouth feeling kind of tingly and clean.

Still, Cas, even as a newly minted human, seemed to need _things_ even less than any of the rest of them. For one thing, he still hadn’t figured out the concept of clothes that were supposed to fit properly: it never seemed to matter to him if he was wearing Sam’s flannel, or Dean’s jeans, or even one of Kevin’s way-too-small t-shirts (even if Dean had almost dropped a chopping knife on his own foot when _that_ triple threat combination had wandered into the kitchen barefoot one afternoon).

Just because Cas seemed to care even less than other people didn’t mean he _shouldn’t_ have something kind of nice of his own, though. So when Dean was in the drugstore this afternoon picking up snacks, shampoo, and a new razor, he remembered Cas sort of scrubbing at the skin of his arm with his palm a week before. What’d he said? It’d been something like, “I don’t understand—if a shower is supposed to clean me, why do I always feel stickier after than before?”

With that full-on head-tilty look of hurt confusion about how these tiny little daily rituals seemed so unfair. That one always twisted somewhere behind Dean’s belly button, ‘cause crap, if the daily shit made Cas a little sad about being human, the rest of it was gonna ruin him.

Getting Cas that fancy shower gel had still been a weird whim, though, and with how Cas had reacted, now Dean felt kind of stupid about it. Thank God Kevin or, God forbid, _Sammy_ , had been nowhere around.

He ran a cloth down the slick gleam of Baby’s clean V8 and muttered, “Least I know how to make _you_ happy, right?”

He heard the soft slip-tap of feet moving towards him across the garage’s cement—Cas’s moccasins, a gift from Jody; Sam, like Dean, either went boots or barefoot, and Kevin wore flip-flops—and grunted out a greeting, reaching out to splay himself into the Chevy’s engine block.

“Dean?” In the garage, Cas’s deep voice rumbled and ran like the Impala starting up.

“Yeah, Cas?” he muttered, leaning over to get that little corner that always seemed to build up this thick layer of grime. He pressed harder with his nails through the rag. Just a little more elbow to it, and he’d—

“Would you like to shower with me?” Castiel asked, from just behind and over Dean’s right shoulder, and Dean hit his head on the edge of Baby’s hood.

Cas wasn’t in his face when Dean whirled around, but he was close enough to touch, close enough that Dean caught the flash of his eyes and the whites around them, startled, his lips just a little parted. He settled, though, his posture human—hipshot, head a little cocked. The dark blue Henley he was wearing over a pair of Dean’s jeans fired his eyes to the color of Lake Superior in summer.

“Oh, _Dean._ ” Cas huffed out a small fond sound—half a laugh, half exasperation, and where the fuck _that_ was coming from when Cas had just asked—no, Dean could not have heard him right. “What are you doing? Are you alright?”

Cas reached out two fingers to touch his forehead, and Dean, automatically, leaned in.

Cas’s hand was close enough that Dean almost felt the electric shiver of contact before five years of reflex stalled with realization. Dean wasn’t sure which of them pulled back first, but he knew _he_ jerked back quickly enough that the garage danced around him.

He wobbled a little, catching himself on the Impala’s fan shroud. The hand that had been approaching his face swooped down and caught him under the elbow instead, balancing him.

“I’m sorry,” Cas told him, miserably.

“What?” Dean blinked down at him. “No, _fuck_ , Cas, don’t—not your fault.” That wasn’t actually true—Cas was a hundred percent responsible for Dean hitting his head; what the hell had that been about?! But the fact that Cas couldn’t heal him wasn’t Cas’s fault for _anything_.

Cas didn’t meet his eyes, though. “You should sit down,” Cas told him, and his hand was strong and firm under Dean’s elbow.

“Nah.” Dean leaned a hip against his car’s headlight and pressed a hand to the shining spot of pain on the back of his head. “I’m… ow.” There was blood on his fingertips. Damn, Baby had got him but _good._ He grimaced and rummaged into his pocket for a moderately clean something to hold pressure with. Scalp wounds were such a bitch. “I’m fine.”

“Don’t use that! That’s filthy.” Cas snatched the oil-streaked rag away with a scowl and dug into his pocket, shoving a folded square of cloth at Dean instead.

Geez, it wasn’t that bad. Cas had turned into such a weird germaphobe about some things. Dean unfolded the cloth Cas had handed him and peered at it. It was white and cottony, soft, and edged with a narrow border of pastel blue plaid. Like a napkin, but softer and… fancier.

What the hell? “Is this a handkerchief?” he asked.

“Yes?”

“Why do you have a handkerchief?”

“In case I have to blow my nose. Runny noses are _horrible_.” Cas squinted. “That is an obvious fact. Do you have a concussion?”

“Uh, no.” Dean gave up, and pressed the handkerchief to the back of his head. Cas couldn’t be fucked to figure out which clothes were his own, but he had handkerchiefs. Figured. “Alright, what’s going on, Cas?” He hadn’t hit his head hard enough to forget what Cas had said that had made him straighten up so fast.

“Oh.” Cas fidgeted with the rag between his fingers, folding the dirty thing up into a neat little square—fuck, that motion; that was so goddamned _human—_ but he didn’t look away from Dean’s face. He still hadn’t learned how much eye contact was too much. Dean wasn’t gonna be the one to teach him. “I asked if you would like to shower with me.”

Had he had this dream? Dean thought he’d probably had this dream once or twice. He lowered his hand and looked at the splotch of bright red blood on the handkerchief before pressing it back to his hair. _That_ hadn’t happened in any of his dreams, though.

“ _What_?” he finally demanded.

Cas blinked at him, a little shyly. “The instructions said that I should ask, didn’t they? That can wait.” He craned over next to Dean and actually went up on his _tiptoes_. “Let me look at your head.”

The… what?

But Dean gave up and let Cas lead him into the Vault and dig out the little first-aid kit.

Dean had almost laughed himself into choking when Kevin had brought home the little white plastic box filled with betadine swabs and teeny gauze pads and band-aids, and stashed it proudly in an empty space under the map in the War Room. What the fuck did they need with that? The one and only time Dean had ever used band-aids willingly, he’d been seven, Sammy had been three, and Sammy wouldn’t stop crying until Dean covered up his own scraped knees.

Then, last week, Sam had gotten a paper cut from some old book. Sam Winchester, Dean’s gigantic little brother, who’d wrapped himself around Lucifer and jumped into Hell, who’d fought through dislocated shoulders and bullet wounds to the gut, had grumbled and flinched about the damned little nick on his finger so much that Cas had offered to _kiss_ it better.

(None of them knew if Cas had been serious, because he really was a sarcastic little shit. The little brown band-aid that Kevin had hastily offered Sam seemed a small enough price to pay for not finding out.)

Dean let his head hang, resting his chin down on his chest as Cas dabbed gently at the back of his head.

“It’s already stopped bleeding,” Cas said from behind him, his fingers combing very gently through Dean’s short hair, brushing along his temples and behind his ears in absent little stripes. For just a second, Dean left his eyes drift half-closed at the feel of them. Cas reached past him to put the blob of cotton on the table and take up bloody handkerchief that Dean had left in front of him, his weight pressing warm and firm against Dean’s back. “I think you’ll live.”

Dean let his lips curl upwards for just a moment in a real smile before he lifted his chin and opened his eyes the rest of the way. “Oh, good, I was worried there for a sec.” He grinned over his shoulder at his best friend. Cas rolled his eyes, and Dean felt his grin widen. Sassy little asshole. “Dunno what I did to Baby that she’d do me dirty that way.”

Cas walked around from Dean’s back and leaned his hip against the Vault’s table, neatening up the inside of the teeny weeny first aid kit before clicking it closed. “Baby loves you very much, and would never injure you intentionally.”

Cas said that not like he was making a funny, but like he _knew_.

Dammit. Cas needed to _not_ say shit like that. But that would’ve made him, human or not, _not Cas,_ and Dean wouldn’t have had that for the world.

It still took a little while before Dean could reply, though. Cas waited, patient and quiet, beside him—verbal space even if Cas still wasn’t all that great with personal space.

“Well, since it wasn’t Baby tryin’ to kill me, must’ve been you.” Dean rolled the leftover cotton ball back and forth across the table’s smooth surface with one finger, and looked pointedly at Cas. “What the hell was that about, buddy?”

“That was what the instructions said I should do.” And while Dean was still staring at him, Cas frowned and looked at him sideways, almost suspiciously. “On the shower gel,” he clarified.

Dean burst out laughing—which kind of made the back of his head throb, but what the fuck? Who read the instructions on the _bath wash?_ “And you took that to mean that you should give me a _concussion_?”

“You said yourself you are not concussed,” Cas told him, irritable and important. “Though in my experience, you are probably a terrible judge of these things.”

Goddammit. Even as a human, Cas was Dean’s favorite freaking angel.

Cas had his shoulders curled a little upwards and looked like was going to try and smite Dean if he laughed at him again, though, so Dean had the corners of his mouth mostly under control by the time he had the cotton ball flattened down to a little pellet.

“Okay,” Dean finally continued. “No, seriously.”

Cas huffed at him like _Dean_ was the one being difficult, and pushed off the table. He came back stomping as much as a little angel dude could stomp in moccasins, muttering something that wasn’t English.

Dean got the sense of it anyway. _“Why are you being so difficult?”_ sounded the same in pretty much every language.

Cas slammed the bottle onto the table in front of him, then crossed his arms. “You see?” he pointed out, tucking his chin aggressively.

> HOW TO USE
> 
> Oh come on! We don’t need to  
>  tell you how to use a shower gel,  
>  do we?
> 
> If you _really_ don’t know how then  
>  we suggest you find someone you  
>  _really_ like and invite them to the  
>  shower with you to demonstrate

Oh. _Shit_.

The cotton ball pellet under Dean’s fingers went sailing off into the corner of the room. He reached up to scratch the back of his head hard, then remembered that there was a barely-healed scab back there just in time and relocated it to gripping the back of his neck.

“Oh, _Jesus.”_ Dean shook his head. Okay. Voice was too deep. He cleared his throat. “That’s not…” He swallowed, and his throat clicked. Shit. Shit, Cas had really thought… Dean dropped both his hands to the table with a too-loud ‘thunk’ and dug his fingernails into the wood.

He could. He could do that, Cas was _literally_ asking for it. He was _fucking literally_ asking Dean to get into the shower with him naked and put his hands on him wet, get him soapy and slick and smelling like something that _Dean_ had bought him. Dean could watch the trickle of suds down tan lines he glimpsed every time Cas’s sleeves rode up, or the waistline of his shirts—fit his hands onto the sharp arcs of Cas’s hipbones—

Fuck. _Fuck_. So this was what temptation tasted like.

But that didn’t mean anything to Cas. That didn’t mean he _wanted_ to be touched like that. It didn’t matter what the fuck Dean had wanted for years now, every guilty dream he’d splattered across motel shower stalls. Dean was not gonna take advantage of the fact that in most ways Castiel was new to human life, and for an eternal pillar of light and warrior of God, he was still an _innocent._

For God’s sakes, he took goddamned _shower gel instructions_ seriously.

Dean laughed, weakly, and dug his nails in harder. “It’s not real instructions, Cas. It’s just a, y’know. A sex joke.”

Cas cocked his head at him, frowning. His lower lip was just the slightest bit pinker than his upper, and he had it tucked out just a little.

Dean braced himself for ‘Why?’ He braced himself for sarcasm. Maybe a rant about why humans couldn’t even do instructions right. (Dean didn’t have an argument for the last one.)

“Yes, I know,” Cas answered, his brow furrowing up. “It’s innuendo about two people sharing a shower and washing each other intimately. I’m not stupid.”

It was a good thing there wasn’t anything for Dean to hit his head on from where he was sitting. And that he couldn’t actually dislocate his jaw from how fast it had dropped.

“Uh,” he managed.

Cas blinked at him, and now he was looking very, _very_ squinty, and as confused as Castiel ever was. “You… _gave_ it to me, Dean. Why are you so surprised? You _must_ have known who I would go to when I saw the directions…” His voice got softer, like the soft grind of faraway gravel from someone coming home. “I thought perhaps we finally…”

They stared at each other. Dean didn’t know which of them the crowbar called realization hit first. Actually, no, he knew, because the inside of his brain was washing lightning-white and crashing like a storm front hitting the bunker’s roof—there was no realization happening here, no-one was home yet.

Cas had thought Dean had read the instructions _before_ he’d given him the bath wash? The fucking innuendo-filled instructions on the back of a soap bottle (why did those exist? Seriously, ever-lovin’ _why_ ) and had given it to him intentionally _anyway?_

Except, of course, Dean hadn’t done any of that, because who did that? That would imply, first of all, that he _read soap bottles._ Second of all, it’d imply he’d _meant_ Cas to invite him for sexy suds time, and there was no world in which Dean would’ve—

Cas’s eyes dropped back to the bottle on the table, to Dean’s hands, anywhere but Dean’s shocked face. “Oh,” he said, softly. “I… see. I misunderstood.” Color started to rise around his ears, first. The blush pooled hot and bright around Cas’s cheekbones and crossed the bridge of his nose. His Adam’s apple rocked as he swallowed. He snatched the little bottle off the table in front of Dean’s slack fingers and started backing up, clutching it against his chest. “This is… I am very embarrassed. I… please forget I said anything, Dean—”

He shouldn’t. He shouldn’t. He shouldn’t, Cas couldn’t possibly know what he was—

Dean was _done_ making assumptions for what Cas did or didn’t know, and what Cas did or didn’t want.

Dean shoved back from the table and lunged out of his chair so fast it scraped and toppled onto its back. With the reflexes honed by thirty years of trouncing some of the worst monsters ever shat out of God’s imagination, Dean Winchester tripped over a chair leg, went stumbling across the floor with one arm windmilling, and almost took down his favorite not-an-angel when he grabbed for Cas’s elbow.

Cas stared down at Dean—half bent over, one hand on his own thigh, one clutching at Cas’s arm. Cas was so clearly embarrassed and bewildered and pink-faced, and so fucking cute Dean wanted to bend him over the nearest horizontal surface.

Too soon? Too soon.

Maybe.

“Hey, uh…” Dean swallowed. Shit. Holy shit. He should say something. He should really say something clever here. But he was letting himself notice that Cas had broad shoulders and trim hips; he was letting himself linger on the sleek curve of Cas’s collarbones, arcing out from over the top of the blue Henley that lit up his eyes and brightened his blush.

“Still up for that demonstration?” he managed, hopefully.

*_*_*_*

> Acure Curiously Clarifying Body Wash with Lemongrass and Argan, 12 Oz
> 
> CWinchester
> 
> ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ A wonderful experience!  
>  Reviewed in the United States on August 8, 2014
> 
> It has a very lovely lemongrass smell, and leaves my skin feeling very clean after a shower, with no unpleasant soapy residue. I enjoy it every time I use it, and can honestly say that it has changed my life for the better.
> 
> Please note, however, that we followed the instructions on the bottle very carefully, so others’ results may vary.
> 
> * * *
> 
> 122 people found this helpful

~fin~

**Author's Note:**

> The idea of the review at the end is wholly not mine: it belongs to [sacados](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sacados/pseuds/sacados)! I really do love writing these little bunker tales, and I hope you are enjoying them as well!
> 
> All the best ideas come from the [Profound Bond Discord server](https://discord.gg/profoundbond), and we would love it if you would come join us!


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